


A Study in Red

by Canarii



Category: Torchwood
Genre: Backstory, Character Study, Gen, Headcanon, POV Female Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-07
Updated: 2011-12-07
Packaged: 2017-10-27 01:05:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 909
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/289878
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Canarii/pseuds/Canarii
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rome wasn’t built in a day, and Jilly wasn’t born in red lipstick either. [ Character Study ]</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Study in Red

**Author's Note:**

> Mild Spoilers for Torchwood: Miracle Day

There comes a time in every child’s life when they realize some great and terrible truth previously unknown to them. Maybe it’s that Santa Claus isn’t real. Maybe it’s that happily ever afters only happen in fairy tales. Or maybe even, that grownups really don’t know everything.

Jilly Kitzinger realized that people don’t always mean what they say.

It might surprise people to know that she was a quiet child. Seen but not heard. _Jillian, don’t bother Mommy when she’s working, Jillian, leave Daddy be, he’s had a long day._ The only daughter of a business attorney and an economic journalist, she spent her formative years surrounded by people whose power lay in what they said, and more in what they didn’t say.

Her mother worked out of the home, and her father in some fancy office across town she only glimpsed a handful of times. He was always home late. Sometimes, he wouldn’t come home at all, or she’d be awakened in the wee hours of the morning by his keys in the lock. While her mother was a person, her father was more like an idea. A seldom seen figure who would swoop in for the last ten minutes of her birthday party or Christmas celebration to plant an expensive toy in her lap. That was reality, through a child’s eyes.

She was eight years old the day she looked out her window and saw him in a car with a woman that was not her mother. It wasn’t the first, or the last. And as the years went on and her senses grew keener, the long procession of girls and women blurred together with each accidental sighting.

One day she asked her mother what Daddy did after work, and in repeated, perfectly recited words, Margerat Kitzinger told her that ‘Daddy goes to play cards with his friends sometimes’.

She knew.

Jillian saw the way her mother avoided the windows, stopped warmly greeting her husband with a polished and practiced smile when he’d walk in the door. She knew, but she said nothing. She let someone else’s half truths define her world. A world in which she was happily married to a wonderful man whose worst vice was the occasional glass of scotch.

And from then on Jillian decided never to be silent again.

After all, the outspoken made history. It was the Martin Luthor Kings, the Paul Reveres, the voices in the night that dared to be heard that made a difference.

Then again, they were also the ones hunted, assasinated, or in her case, chastised by the nuns in class for speaking their mind a bit too loudly. So she learned. To be heard without attracting the wrong kind of attention.

She learned to treat people like cats. To use their distain and self importance against them. Never petting, just letting that hand dangle ever so temptingly off the edge of the armrest. Within sight, feigning obiviousness as long as it took for them to approach, and thinking it was their own idea, rub their whiskers into that hand.

She hated cats almost as much as she hated people.

She learned that men liked you better if you acted stupid, and women if you pretended they were prettier than you. In college she started wearing her lipstick a little too red, her heels a little too high. She started to speak a little too loud, and dressed herself in the vibrant reds and golds that in nature meant ‘stay away from me, I’m poison.’

Being the valedictorian was nice. Being memorable, was better.

In Grad school, she had a one night fling with one of her professors. Call it Daddy sissues, she’d always had a thing for older men. They shared a taxi back from his office. It dropped him off first, and as he ascended the stairs up to the townhouse, she could swear for a second that she saw a little girl’s face looking down at them from a lit window.

She felt sick with shame for approximately six hours. The next day, after class, he pulled her aside, and told her it was a mistake, and begged her not to tell anyone. She’d seen the ring he slipped into his pocket before each class. She knew.

Jilly never told anyone, but in the end she bought herself a new pair of ruby pumps with his fear, and washed off her guilt without effort. It wasn’t wrong, it was how the world worked. The strong took what they wanted, anything they could. The rich suppressed the poor and the poor stole from the rich. And everyone else tustled and teetered on the fine line inbetween, fighting to reach one side and not be knocked over onto the other. It was an endless, broken circle. But it was just the way it was.

And so she worked to make the vilest of the vile smell like roses, standing just to the side of fame to avoid the crossfire it brought with it, while still reaping the basic benefits.

She tells herself the Miracle was the best thing that ever happened to her. Another step up, another angle. Finally, a chance to use her talents on a large scale. It’s okay if she fights a little dirty, the world is dirty.

And it’s only for a moment, heels clicking down an alley in Shanghai, that a cold shiver makes her wonder if she was wrong.


End file.
